The hot topic these days is TRAINING FOR LONGEVITY…but what does that actually mean, and how do you go about it to get real results in lifelong health and fitness?
I’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of people over 43 years, helping them to achieve lifelong health and peak performance. I’m going to share with you a few tips that you can use to train for longevity. Today we’ll cover some specific recommendations regarding exercise selection, workload management, and program design. But first I think it would be valuable to look at some underlying principles.
What we’re really talking about here is not just putting together some behaviors that give us a shot at a long life. We’re targeting a different concept, and that’s giving LONGEVITY to your health, fitness, and athleticism, so that you remain highly functional throughout life and especially in your later years. You want capability and repeatability so that you can do anything you like and not get destroyed in the process. We use a number of slogans within our fitness for life training community in The Lifetime Athlete App. While they might seem like trite phrases, they really help to define this longevity-based training process.
It’s all about being Hard to Kill. Again, that sounds like impressive jargon but what we’re really talking about here is using training, nutrition, and lifestyle to become as robust, resilient, versatile, and durable as possible. We say we are fighting back against the Grim Reaper, not making it easy for him to get us… but what this actually represents is our quest to not only live a reasonably long life, but one which is filled with maximum participation, success, and enjoyment. An existence that is not bogged down in disability, extreme functional limitations, and low quality in our later years.
NO DAYS OFF describes the ethos regarding our consistency of the training habit. That’s not saying Go Hard All the Time. Of course we strategically utilize high and moderate workload training, but we space those elements appropriately and fill in around them with light and relatively easy days. We come at this with the understanding that if you are training properly, in an ideal manner, with enough stimulus to deliver adaptation – somewhere between the minimum effective and maximum absorbable dosage – you hardly ever need to take a day off because you always feel good. Or great. Preserving health as a foundation, ensuring recovery, and avoiding the negative effects and slippery slope of downtime…that’s the key, especially as you get older. The occasional day off here and there, when really necessary – like when travel, fatigue, or warding off illness makes this prudent – is fine. Not gonna hurt ya. But less is more when it comes to days off for The Lifetime Athlete.
So how do you put all this together when you’re trying to play the long game known as L-I-F-E?
Exercise selection requires an assortment of movements and training modes that facilitate giving your body a baseline or better level of all 5 Capacities of Human Performance. Strength. Speed. Power. Agility. And Endurance. Maintaining an adequate level of all-around capabilities. Sure, you can specialize in any sport you like, but as you age it becomes more and more necessary to address all these properties in order to eliminate deficiencies. Any deficiency in a physiologic property can become problematic if it gets too low. For example if you don’t have enough strength, or aerobic fitness, or mobility (which is a part of agility), to meet your daily demands…you’re placing yourself in a precarious position where breakdown becomes more probable.
Genetics factor heavily into the exercise selection process. Regarding those 5 capacities of strength, power, speed, agility, and endurance…each person will have an area or two where they naturally shine, where performance comes relatively easily and they excel compared to others…these tend to become your favorites or go-to’s. Anyone who has spent a few years (or even just a couple months) training and playing sports automatically knows their attributes. But in most cases you’ll also have a couple of categories which you don’t necessarily consider your strong points…they need bringing up a bit. You can be slightly, or even significantly, deficient in one of these properties. As you get older…it’s important that you have adequate or again…baseline abilities in every capacity. Consequently, you learn to bias your training. Develop your strengths maximally when you’re seeking peak performance, but also shore up weaknesses so they really aren’t all that weak in the first place. We build these aspects into our T2 programming because we use a block-periodized system that is based on an Annual Training Plan. But you can approach this in any number of ways. Just learn about your body’s unique needs and make your training reflect this along with your personal goals in sports, aesthetics, or just everyday life.
We also want to keep an eye on movement pattern competency. Choose exercises that provide opportunities for skill development and maintenance in squatting, lunging, hinging, pushing, pulling, rotating, carrying, throwing, catching, jumping, landing, running…and probably a few more. While you should train for a basic capacity, like improving strength or endurance, you also want to organize your training in such a way that it keeps you proficient at getting up and down, in and out of a variety of positions, and moving in a fluid, graceful…athletic manner. Think of your workout as movement practice, because that’s exactly what it is.
Anatomy, injury history, personal preferences, and access to equipment can all factor into how you determine your personal exercise variations. You become aware over time that some movements simply work and feel better for your body than others. Your internal joint geometry, limb and trunk lengths, percentages of fast versus slow twitch fibers…all of these and more can make one person better at…let’s say deadlifting versus squatting, but there are infinite examples here. This is what you could call an interexercise distinction. You will also become aware of intraexercise distinctions that can lead you to prefer a hack squat to a back squat…or anything else. It’s important to address all the major movement patterns but we must do so in a way that is effective, efficient, appropriately scaled, and which doesn’t accelerate wear and tear on our joints.
Workload is the cumulative effect, or impact, of the combination of volume and intensity in your training. Your training workload should be relatively nonlinear. While you definitely want to be consistent and regular with your workouts, the stimulus should go up and down throughout your year in accordance with your goals and seasons, and it should always allow for adequate recovery.
Your personal, longevity-based training program is the end result of the vision-goal-plan-program process. 4 parts there. This is a standardized coaching model and it’s one that I’ve employed with clients, as well as myself, for well over 4 decades. Start with a Vision. Where do you see yourself in the future? What do you want to be capable of doing? Then define a specific Goal. What are the objective parameters you need to achieve? Build a Plan which establishes a reasonable timeline and a general framework for your training. Ultimately, develop a Program which applies the appropriate exercises, workouts, recovery windows, and cycles which will lead to your success. This is precisely what every elite and professional athlete does and there is absolutely no reason that everyday people like you and I shouldn’t be utilizing the same tools.
Honestly, I recognize that some of this stuff can seem complicated. You might feel like seeking out the help of a skilled professional or product to support your longevity quest. Full disclosure here folks, I do have something to sell you, and that’s membership in The Lifetime Athlete App. It’s a low cost, high value comprehensive resource that explains all of these practices in a thorough way which I could never do in a short piece of content like this. Workouts, courses, masterclasses, challenges, tips, daily notifications, articles, videos, a private social network and on-demand access to personalized coaching and injury management…plus more. If you’re into these things…the App might just be your ticket.
When longevity is the focus, personalization is the key. Begin by addressing the general athletic capacities and movement pattern competencies necessary for every human to live a high-functioning life. From there we progress to considerations for everything from gender, current age and ability, schedules, social connections, likes and dislikes, education, motivation, and anything else that leads to the win of doing effective training consistently, and enjoying optimal outcomes. It is a dynamic, and never static, process. The lifelong journey of learning about your body, and how to train it, is best experienced with a growth mindset. Evaluate how you feel, and the results you’re getting, with an ongoing perspective to emphasize what’s working and modify what needs to be adjusted. Become a student of this process. As your knowledge grows, share it with others and build a supportive, like-minded, inclusive community of longevity warriors. But always remain humble and open-minded. Training for longevity is the art form which allows you to play the long game in LIFE…as a Lifetime Athlete.